Great DVDs at the library

Lately, I’ve been adding a lot of new DVDs to the library’s collection, so I thought a post about DVDs might be a good idea.

The library has DVDs on topics that apply to courses, DVDs that can help you with activities you do in your daily life, and DVDs you might want to watch just for fun. Here are just a few:

• Secrets of body language [BF637 .N66 S43 2008] - This documentary shows how politicians and celebrities use their body language to persuade people, establish their power, and advance their careers. If you ever watched and enjoyed the show Lie to Me, you might enjoy this.
• The eye of the storm [LC212.22 .I8 E94 2007] - This documentary follows third grade teacher Jane Elliott's experiment to teach her all-white class about racism by dividing them into "blue-eyes" and "brown-eyes," making one group superior or inferior on successive days.
• Rosemary & Thyme (1st and 2nd series) [PN1992.8.D48 R67 2005 and PN1992.8.D48 R671 2005] - Murder and gardening!
• Lost (Season 1) [PN1992.8.S35 L678 2005] - I have to admit, the only season I watched all the way through was this one. This show starts off great: a plane crash, a mysterious island, and lots of characters with secrets.
• Flatland [QA699 .A132 2007] - This DVD features oppressed geometrical shapes. It's based on a book that you can also check out.
• Project Runway (Season 1) [TT502 .P76 2004] - Yes, we have the first season of Project Runway.
• Jane Eyre [PR4167 .J3 W45 2007] - The BBC miniseries adaptation of the book.
• Shopping behind the seams : judging quality in clothes [TX340 .S56 2009] - This educational DVD shows you the things to look for when you're clothes shopping, to make sure that the clothes you're buying are worth what you're paying for them. Expensive clothes aren't necessarily well-made, and cheap clothes won't necessarily fall apart after the first few washes.
• First impressions : etiquette and work habits for new employees [HF5389 .F57 2005] - A bit cheesy, but useful.

And here are a few more you can expect to see on the library’s shelves soon:

• Freakonomics [HB74 .P8 F695 2007] - If you like the book or haven't read the book yet but want to, you might want to watch this. And, by the way, the library has the book, too.
• Pride and prejudice [PR4034 .P7 L36 2010] - The one with Colin Firth!
• I'm normal, you're weird [HM101 .I538 1998] - An educational program wrapped in a bit of sci-fi. The story: a trio of aliens is coming to our planet and wants to blend in, so they spend some time looking at all kinds of aspects of human behavior that are culturally determined.
• One red paperclip [HF1019 .O54 2008] - A documentary about a guy who bartered his way up from a single red paperclip to a house in only one year.

Documentaries

Yesterday was YouTube's 5th birthday! And in that short timeframe, YouTube has built up a following of two BILLION views a day. You can visit npr.org to read that story. One point taken from the popularity of YouTube, is that we are increasingly interested in VIEWING. If a picture is worth a 1000 words, what is a video worth?

I found this most wonderful site of documentaries, BBC World Service. Who knew that the respected BBC maintained an archive of documentaries! The subjects range from the 1976 hijacking of an Air France plane, to an appraisal of Thomas Jefferson, to the anatomy of a car crash, police atrocities, Bernie Madoff, Beatles in the USSR, the financial crash, GW Bush, a child sold into prostitution at age 9, and on and on. Go to YouTube for fun, and go to BBC for information.